A field that includes qualifiers, only the top 60 and ties playing the weekend, and a course set up to make scoring hard. How to run a U.S. Open pool, and how the cut and the tiebreaker play there.
The field loads from DataGolf once the previous week's event finishes, from Sunday night UTC, and refreshes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to pick up late changes and withdrawals. Members can re-pick as often as they like until the Thursday lock, so late changes can be handled before play starts.
He drops off the pick sheet, but your pick stays until you change it. Nothing replaces him automatically, so re-pick before the lock. The commissioner can also swap any pick for another golfer in the same tier, before or after the lock.
It is the group's call; the trade-off is how much a Friday exit should hurt. A fixed +8 per round is predictable. Highest Carded Round ties the penalty to how hard the weekend plays. Exclude only removes the weekend rounds, so a missed-cut golfer's first two rounds still count and he can finish ahead of someone who played four.
The tiebreaker takes any whole number from -30 to +10, and the stepper starts at -12. The USGA sets U.S. Open courses up for difficult scoring, so check the prediction rather than leaving the default. Distance is absolute, so being 3 over the real score counts the same as being 3 under.
It uses a two-hole aggregate playoff, then sudden death if still tied. The tiebreaker compares predictions with the winner's 72-hole total, which does not include playoff holes.
They use the default, +8 strokes for each missed round. The rule picker appears only on the Office Pool create screen.